How To Use Self Hypnosis To Overcome Your Fear Of Heights!

Everyone feels a little out of place when exposed to heights, especially if the elevation is unprotected. Though it may sound absurd or ridiculous to some…there ARE people, in fact, quite a many of them who suffer from acrophobia/batophobia…in simple words, fear of heights! They give in to panic and are unable to get down from the elevation due to their anxiety. There are also situations where you give in to irrational fear and might even collapse.

When it comes to facing and coping with your phobia, here are 4 steps that guide you through the entire process of identifying and overcoming it.

Step 1

Understanding Your Phobia: To get ‘rid of’ your phobia, you need to understand and get to the root of the problem. Phobias usually stem from a particular issue, a trauma that has created a specific response to something or even some particular situation. When you rip the issue straight from the root, you don’t give it a chance to resurface and take over.

Step 2

Reconditioning Your Mind: Improves your understanding of the problem, and you start treating your phobia as just that – a problem. Once you have identified the problem, it is time to find a solution to it.

Step 3

‘Recasting’ Your Response To It: Unless you change your attitude towards the problem, your phobia will continue to overwhelm you. So change your response to the problem, and you will find it easier to tackle your problem.

Step 4

Breaking Free Of The Chains Of Your Phobia: this is the final step that is possible only after you successfully identify and eradicate the source of your phobia.

These same rules apply to acrophobia or the fear of heights.

Definition – what is acrophobia?

Acrophobia is the fear of heights, not just tall heights, but even stairs or low levels of elevation can bring on a panic attack…as far as the accepted definition of Acrophobia goes, Wikipedia informs,

“Acrophobia is an extreme or irrational fear of heights. It belongs to a category of specific phobias, called space and motion discomfort that share both similar etiology and options for treatment.”

Know your Acrophobia Symptoms: vertigo vs. acrophobia!

You might confuse acrophobia symptoms with vertigo, as do most people. However, vertigo is one of the symptoms of acrophobia or the fear of heights. Though you might have been used to using the 2 terms interchangeably, the fact remains that vertigo is the sensation of ‘spinning’ even when you are not physically going through the sensation.

You might suffer from a sensation of reeling when exposed to extreme heights but that is not acrophobia in itself. True vertigo can be triggered due to any sort of motion, not necessarily heights.

Other symptoms:

Rapid heart rate

Palpitations

Nausea

Profuse sweating

Fainting spells

In some cases, a person suffering from acrophobia can also be petrified with fear which jeopardizes any attempt to rescue them.

Treatment options that you can turn to…

Use hypnosis to control your fear by getting to the root cause of the trauma and uprooting it from the core. Given that phobias including acrophobia stem from the unconscious mind, addressing the unconscious works better.

Phobias result from the mental images associated with a particular stimulus such as heights, and addressing the unconscious can dissociate the fear inducing images from the stimulus.

Different methods that you can use:

Traditional hypnosis: In this method you can use post-hypnotic suggestion to redirect your reaction to heights. However, according to modern case studies, people tend to think independently, and you might unconsciously refuse the direct post hypnotic instructions, rendering this method inadequate.

Ericksonian hypnosis: developed by Milton Erickson, MD, this method is an advanced version of hypnotherapy. Instead of direct suggestions, this method utilizes suggestions hidden in conversation, metaphors, and stories. Such hidden suggestions cannot be rejected because the subconscious mind can’t always identify them. Thus such hidden indirect suggestions help you to come out of phobia a lot more easily.

Relaxation hypnosis: This is usually a combination of different techniques of hypnotherapy along with Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques. Relaxation therapy is the starting point for such advanced versions of hypnosis. Once your mind is relaxed and clear, only then can the stimulus from the hypnotherapy have an effect.